Red stickers

Lookit… new… actual… flash!

Flash 31

Your things are everywhere in this house. When I stood in the doorway of our bedroom and watched you gather possessions into your bag, I thought you had taken everything. You were always so fastidious. But I had forgotten how we had spread out ion this shared space.

I opened the DVD player today and your copy of Pulp Fiction was inside it. You must have watched it in the middle of one of the nights where you stayed up into the early hours to avoid coming to bed. You took the cover when you left but not the disc. It almost made me laugh. Your foolproof plan of keeping track of your DVDs, CDs and books with those little red dots you stuck on their spines hadn’t quite worked. I hate those fucking stickers. They were a symbol of our whole relationship. It was like you always had one foot out the door. Like you knew that sooner or later you’d be leaving and you’d need to know what was yours. No matter how many times you told me you loved me and that we were meant to be together, it was the stickers I believed.

I guess what you never knew was that I used to peel them off and lend your things to my friends… the ones you didn’t like. When I got over my urge to revel in your loss, I stopped to wonder when I became so goddamned spiteful. When we first met I used to draw little hearts and put them in your lunch. I used to get up earlier than you and put your shirts and socks over the radiator so they’d be warm when you got dressed for work. And by the end the greatest joy I was getting out of our relationship was watching you scratch your head and wonder what happened to that copy of Sin City you were convinced you’d bought in the HMV sale.

I suppose it was the first time I checked your phone. I’d never done that before, not with you or anyone else. I hadn’t expected to find anything. It was a case of curiosity killed the cat. Because there were all those messages from her. I had never thought you were the type. Maybe it’s because, in a way, I didn’t think anyone else would really want you. I sat for hours just holding the phone in my hand. You were at that football match and you’d left it behind.

I should have confronted you then but I didn’t know how to tell you that I had invaded your privacy on such a base level. I didn’t know how to explain why I didn’t trust you and so instead, I took out your favourite CDs. The ones you loved but didn’t play all the time and I burnt them with a lighter so they wouldn’t play because I knew you’d never suspect me just like I had never suspected you.

After that I turned rogue. It became addictive. I logged into your laptop when you were out with your friends. It was easy enough to guess that your password was my name and just had I had expected all your passwords were the same and you’d let Internet Explorer save half of them for you anyway. I logged into your email… your facebook. There were more and more messages from her. They had started out innocently but there was a point where you started to vent to her about me. You told her about the arguments we had and the two of you laughed about how “neurotic” I could be. You spilled your heart out to her. You told her things you had never told me. You told her that you felt like I had pressurised you into moving in with me and that my desperation to get married baffled you when you suspected that I didn’t love you, not the way people were supposed to love each other.

So many times I drafted responses to her in my head. I wanted to tell her about how you couldn’t come home at night without having a drink and that you kept secrets from me. Stupid secrets. Unimportant ones just for the sake of having them. I wanted to tell her about how you dismissed my opinions and scoffed at my music and film choices. But I never did. I just read, watching the little love affair between who she was pretending to be and who she thought you were develop and I continued to sabotage you. It was me who put the sardines under the lining of the boot of your car. I deleted those meetings out of your BlackBerry.

When you lost your job, I thought we’d spend more time together and maybe get back that time when we were close. When we talked about things other than the gas bill. When we laughed. But you were never home. I knew you were sneaking out to meet her because you’d come home happy and you were never happy when you spent time with me.  I hated seeing you smile to yourself and think that I didn’t know what was making you so fucking cheerful. I spent all day at work wondering what you were doing and so when I was supposed to be writing up reports, I cyberstalked you, following the imprint you left from one social networking site to the next. You never figured how I knew you hadn’t been applying for jobs.

I never imagined for a second that you would be the one to leave me. In my mind I was preparing myself to leave you, when I got bored with torturing you. Now that you’re gone everything reminds me of you. You stupid DVDs, the sock I found behind the dresser, the bills that still come in with your name on them. You think you’ve deleted me out of your life but I can still hack your accounts. I can see that you’ve changed your relationship status and you’re with her now. I see all your cutesy status updates.  I know where you live now and where you work. I’ve sent your boss an anonymous email telling him to check the send items on your work email account. There are some very interesting things I put in there and when she finds out that you’ve lost your job again and why, she’ll leave you and I’ll be here to pick up the pieces.

Your things are everywhere in this house and I’m packing them all up in a box for when you come back.

The other side of the mountain

Flash 30

She sat watching the sun come up over the mountains, bleeding pinky-red streaks across the sky and wondered again what might be behind them. They had never explored that far. For all she knew there was a whole village just on the other side of the slate coloured hills rising out of the jungle.

There were times, mostly at sunset, when they lay on the sand and looked up at those gigantic slabs and fantasised about climbing them. He was always positive and brave and asked her what she would like most if they got to the other side and there was a town. He said he wanted bread, cigarettes and chocolate but she would never play the game.

“What if we climbed it and one of us fell?” she said. “We don’t even have any antiseptic. What if one of us broke our leg and got stuck? We would die up there!”

“It would be worth it,” he said. “It would be worth it if there were people on the other side.”

“And if there weren’t?” she asked. “What if there is no one on the island but you and I?”

And then he would go silent and stare at the fire and they wouldn’t talk about it anymore.

Sometimes she imagined the two mountains as two kind of benevolent island spirits watching over them and keeping them safe. Those were the days when it was sunny and when he managed to catch fish for them to eat. In her dreams though sometimes they loomed over her like colossal stone demons reminding her how small and fragile she was. Sometimes in her dreams they would slide through the jungle crushing the trees in front of them until she was backed into the sea with nowhere to go except to disappear under the water into the dark forever. Other times in her dreams she would climb the cliffs, always alone. She would get to the top and find that beyond the mountains there was nothing… an abyss. Pure, dead darkness. A chasm of emptiness stretching to the very centre of the earth.

When she had these dreams she would cry out in her sleep and he would put his arms around her and hold her close to him and she would feel temporarily safe but even his touch could never completely chase away the feeling of dread that gnawed away at her.

In the “Before” as they called the time before the crash, he was not someone she would have spent her time with or even encountered. He was loud and wild and rash and she had always been quiet and cautious. But here in the After it was just them. At first she had thought she was alone and so she had sat on the beach and cried and then eventually when it started to rain she had tried to put together a shelter our of palm leaves that leaked and blew away in the wind. When he found her she was soaked through and half-starved. She remembered clearly when she woke up shivering and saw his shock of blonde hair dangling over her face. How she had screamed until he eventually put his hand over her mouth.

He was much better at the shelter building and fire creation than she was. She found that none of the things she knew… none of the things she was good at were much use in the jungle. No one needed her to manage their advertising budget or set up a supplier network or find the best ROI in the shortest time. No one needed her to find them a night bus home or make them the perfect mojito.

And so she came to depend on him and he kept her alive, not only by building her a home but by making her laugh the times where it rained for weeks and she thought about her family.

She wasn’t sure the exact moments when they had gone from strangers to friends… to lovers. Sometimes she felt that she truly loved him and that the crash had brought them together. That this had been fate. Those were good times because then things felt like they had happened for a reason. Other times she wondered if some kind of primeval survival instinct had kicked in and made her want him so they’d survive. These were the days she wanted to run. Run into the jungle and climb the mountains and never come back. To run till she vanished and became vapour. These were the days she wished she died in the crash.

What she did remember clearly was the day he had started building the raft. He could never sit still. Never for a second, and while she often sat for hours imagining what she would write if she had a pen and paper, he was always building something or tearing it down. They could see another island from theirs. A bigger one. And he was convinced sometimes he saw people moving around on the beach.

Whenever he pointed over there and shouted, “They’re there! Do you see? Do you see?”

She would say she saw nothing.

And he would say it was just because his eyesight was better than hers.

And then he started building the raft. He was convinced if he took enough water and coconuts he could make it to the other island.

“You don’t know how far away it is!” she said.

“It can’t be that far,” he said. “I can see people.”

“What if there aren’t any people?” she asked.

“There are! I can see them! And even if there aren’t, I’ll just come back,” he said, stroking her hair. “I’ll always come back for you!”

She clung to him before he got on that raft. She held him so tightly that she left bruises on his arms. And when he left she watched him disappear over the waves, getting smaller and smaller until it got dark and he vanished. And then she waited. Everyday. On the beach.

She couldn’t remember when she realised the wasn’t coming back. It had crept up on her slowly like the mountains crept up on her in her dreams. They had always marked off the days on a big rock next to their shelter. Days, weeks, months… years. He had been gone for one year, four months and twenty-three days.

It wasn’t the fact that he was gone that drove her mad. It was the not knowing. She would never know if he had reached the island if there were people there. She would never know if he had forgotten his promise to come back. She would never know if he was dead. She would not know how he died.

What she did know was that she had nothing left to lose so she stood up into the sunrise and walked towards the mountains to find the abyss and fall into the centre of the earth.

Barbie and the beast

Author’s note: I know this doesn’t have a storyline really… I just wrote it for the pure joy of doing dialogue.

Flash 29

“If we’d have stayed on the highway this never would have happened,” she says, kicking the seat in front of her.

“Sophie, if we’d have stayed on the highway we’d have been hours late. We’re making good time now.”

“Are we, Celeste?” she asks. “Because from where I can see we’re in the middle of nowhere and we’re no closer to the venue than we were when we were on a recognisable route!”

“Maybe if you’d have managed to stay awake for more than five minutes after we left home and helped with the navigation rather than passing out on the backseat like a four-year old we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”

“Maybe if you bought a satnav like every other logical human being on earth, you wouldn’t need me to read the map. At this rate we’re not even going to make the ceremony.”

“Does it matter?” I ask, slyly. “He’s a complete dickhead. It’s not like we want to see our best friend getting married to that troll.”

Sophie bursts out laughing. “God, you got that right. The man has no neck… he’s just a giant slab of animated beef. And what’s all this bullshit where we couldn’t be bridesmaids and he had to have his sisters instead. Who the hell are his sisters? She barely even knows them! If we were bridesmaids we would have been on time!”

“Exactly,” I say. “If she didn’t have to get married in his hick hometown we would have been on time too, you know!”

Dana’s impending nuptials have been a bone of contention for Sophie and me for awhile now. We’ve been a bit of a trio since we shared a house in our student days. Dana and Sophie and already knew each other, had done since they were kids. And Dana was our glue because really Sophie and I don’t really get on. We just rub each other up the wrong way. But then Dana met Bill and thrust Sophie and I together in a begrudging alliance against him.

At first we thought it was some kind of joke. We figured Bill was just a rebound after Dana’s near-prefect, ex, Dougal and so we laughed off his weird controlling ways and his inability to use a fork properly. We figured she would tire of him sooner or later but instead Dana almost vanished from our lives, blowing us out with phrases like, “you have to understand, I’m in a relationship now” and “Bill doesn’t like it when I stay out all night doing tequila shots with you. Shouldn’t we have grown out of this?”

Her announcement that they were engaged was almost the end of our friendship. I think she expected us to be excited but Sophie just asked if there was any vodka and I cried. Maybe this is why we didn’t get to be bridesmaids. Even until a week ago, Sophie and I were quietly convinced that Dana would come to her senses, grow a brain and do a runner. But here we were on the road to nowhere apparently and there was no sign of any kind of cancellation.

“There’s still hope,” says Sophie. “She might run off. Can you imagine if she comes bolting out of one of these fields in her wedding dress. Anyway, can we find a filling station or something, I desperately need a wee!”

“Filling station?” I say. “Mate, all I see here is cows, ok?”

“I can’t wee with cows watching me!”

“Well what would you suggest?” I ask, getting frustrated.

“That looks like a farmhouse over there. Let’s just stop and ask if we can use their loo?”

“We? I don’t need to go!” I say as I pull up to the house.

“You’re going!” she says. “I’m not going into some weirdo stranger’s house without an escort!”

“Weirdo stranger, huh?” says the guy who has appeared leaning on my bonnet. “From what I can tell, love, you’re the weirdo strangers around here!”

He can’t be much older than us… kinda cute maybe if you lean in the right direction.

Sophie shrieks. “You can’t just sneak up on people like that. It’s not… it’s not… it’s just not cricket!”

“Cricket?” I ask her. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

“That’s how the saying goes, Celeste,” she snaps.

The guy looks on bemused. “Did you two actually want something?”

“Oh,” says Sophie, suddenly reverting to her best coy blonde routine. “We just wondered if we could use your bathroom.”

“And maybe if you knew how to get to Potter’s Retreat. We’re going to a wedding there.”

The guy points towards the front door. “Second left.”

And Sophie charges inside like a woman possessed.

“Wedding at Potter’s Retreat, eh?” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “Our friend is marrying a horrible man. He’s not even a man… he’s some kind of yeti-troll-beast! Do you know she wouldn’t even let us be bridesmaids? And now we have to be there in half an hour and we’re lost!”

“Fancy that,” says the guy. “Well you’re only a couple of minutes away. I could show you there myself.”

“That’s very kind,” I say. “I really wish we didn’t have to go. She’s throwing her life away marrying into his family. What a waste.”

“I’m Jez, by the way,” says the guy. “Jez Ryan. Bill Ryan’s cousin.”

“Ah,” I say, noticing for the first time that Jez is wearing a suit.

At that point Sophie comes out of the house. “I feel a million times better. Right, let’s get on to the freakshow! I can’t wait to see his nutter relatives. We should have bought popcorn.”

“We should go,” I manage to choke out. “Now!”

“Why?” asks Sophie. “Big man, like this… surely he can give us directions.”

“Jez Ryan,” says Jez. “Bill’s cousin.”

“Oh fuck,” says Sophie.  “You could have warned me, Celeste!”

“Oh yes, “I said. “Cos I knew when you wanted to pull up here that we would encounter Bill’s relatives, Sophie!”

Jez bursts out laughing. “Trust me. No one in my family is particularly impressed with your Barbie doll friend either. Just get in the car and you can follow me to the wedding. We’ll keep our little conversation quiet.”

In the eye of the beholder

Author’s note: Since Edgar was never really flash… I’m beginning the numbering again at 28.

Flash 28

I see how they look at me. They think I don’t notice, but I do.  Or maybe they know I notice and they don’t care. If I were them, I’d stare too. I know they’re not staring at me because of me. They’re staring at me because of him.  When I am not with him, I fade into obscurity with every other ghost on these streets, with everyone else too boring or unattractive to warrant any further attention.

But Luke is not boring or unattractive. He is as near to perfect as anything mortal I have ever seen. 6’2 with that hair that falls just right in his eyes without him having to do anything with it and eyes that are impossibly blue so it looks like he’s wearing contacts, but he’s not and the contrast between the dark hair and the bright eyes is striking. He’s got broad shoulders and just enough effortless muscle to make him look like he works out but doesn’t obsess about it and when he smiles his mouth goes kind of lopsided and he gets a dimple, just one, in his right cheek.

I didn’t think he was human the first time I met him. He came into my shop to buy a picture for his mum. We talked for a while about the composition of the photograph he had picked and how I had set up the shop. I didn’t blush or giggle or flirt because we’re not even the same species. When he came back time after time and bought more and more photos and prints I didn’t think anything of it. I have plenty of regular customers. Even when he asked me out I just assumed that someone else had bailed on him at the last minute and he didn’t have anyone else to take.

Because, you see, I am… not. Not what you would expect for Luke. Not the girl who makes people double-take. My hair doesn’t fall right, it’s kind of like a hedge, my eyes are more of a muddy pond brown than anything you’d remark at. I don’t work out. And I’m not one of those cute chubby girls who carries her curves with a sexy swagger. I am fat, plain and simple. I shuffle along trying to hide my body. When I tried hair-straighteners and make-up and all of that stuff, I just looked kind of like my dad, with make-up.

I’m not getting down on myself you see. I’m not one of those girls who says, “oh I’m ugly really” and then waits for the compliment. I am a realist. I am honest with me.

The first time Luke kissed me, I ran away. It was so unexpected that my only reaction was flight. Poor boy. He thought I didn’t like him. As if. He’s not only beautiful, Luke is kind and generous and sweet. He’s gentle and funny and ambitious.

He says he doesn’t notice the way I look and that my personality is perfect. He says to him I am more beautiful than any of the modelesque girls  who try to chat him up even when I’m with him. The girls who assume that I am his sister or some poor unfortunate friend.

I have what every girl dreams of and I hate it.

Although Luke and I have been together for a year, I don’t trust him. Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t look at other girls. He doesn’t stay out all night. In fact, he never leaves my side. But I worry constantly that one day one of those lithe blonde angels will catch his eye and he’ll compare me to her and recoil in horror at what he’s put himself through. I never relax because I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And so I am often cold, distant, accusatory… when all Luke has ever shown me is that he wants to love me. He never gets angry. He soothes my ego  and fusses over me, smothers me in affection that I don’t feel I deserve.

But even worse than my trust issues is the looks. Those snide looks. Not just from the twiglet models but from other girls like me. The ones who hate me for putting the idea that someone like me could have someone like him in front of them. For making them look at the barely normal guy they’re dating and compare. We  upset the balance of nature and no one likes it. We are wrong.

It’s funny how many men you see with women way out of their league. Women who are much younger, slimmer and more beautiful than their partners. Short men with bald spots and paunches and bad teeth with their arms around supermodels. No one stares at them. I guess they just assume that the man has money or power or both and that the woman wants it. The fact that we accept these couples without a blink but with a judgement makes superficial gold diggers out of us all.

But there is nothing anyone can do to stop me from doing what I have to do tonight. I have to end this. I can’t live under this pressure, this scrutiny anymore. The judgement I can hear buzzing around me, the hatred I feel seeping out of every pore makes me hate Luke. I can’t look at him. I know this is not his fault but it feels like it. I wish he were fat. I wish he were bald. I wish he was shorter than me. I wish that a life with him was not like walking next to a red arrow pointing out all my shortcomings. Tomorrow I will vanish again and I have never been so relieved.

Edgar The Dragon Slayer – part 10

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9
  

“Your hair?” asks Rilor. “That’s ridiculous. Who would want your hair?”

“Rilor,” says the fairy. “I zink you forget ‘oo is in charge ‘ere, no? Eet ees me ‘oo makes ze decisions about ze forfeits and I weel take ze ‘air. Afterall eet ees Lenny’s romance wiz ‘is ‘air zat ‘as caused zis ‘ole situation. One day you weel all learn not to see zings at face value. Lenny’s ‘air ‘as more value zan any of your treasure because of what it represents to ‘im!”

With that she snaps her fingers and my father is rendered instantly bald. He looks very strange, almost naked with his pink scalp exposed like that. He pats his head absent-mindedly, dazed. My mother jumps up from the tree she has been leaning against and runs to him, taking him in her arms. They embrace, lost in their own little world. They are my parents and I love them.  My dad shows no sign of rejoining the game and from the death grip my mother has on him, I don’t imagine he’ll be moving anytime soon.

“Lenny ees out of ze game,” says the fairy. “’Ee is unable to continue. Play on!”

It’s just me and the two dragons. I feel sick. Every sip of absinth is a struggle to keep down but when I look over at Elle and my parents, their eyes will me to go on. I can’t give up.

In the middle of the next round Rilor suddenly stops dead and stares into space.
“Wotsh goin’ on guv’nor?” slurs Aslef.
“Can’t you see it?” asks Rilor.
“Shee wot?” says Aslef.
“The mountain of treasure floating in the sky. I need to fly up and get it.
I try to say that there’s nothing there but my tongue won’t work.
The fairy giggles. “Zat is ze wormwood working. Rilor, you are done. You know ze ‘allucinations are not allowed!”
Rilor appears to have lost interest in the game anyway and is making attempts to take off in the direction of his imaginary treasure.

“Looksh like it’sh jusht ush, mate,” says Aslef. “You can alwaysh conshede y’know!”
“Never!” I battle out. “An’ live my life in shervitude to you? I’d rather die of alc’ol poisnin!”

Another shot in, I wonder if I have fallen victim to wormwood as well. I can see my dad’s hair floating in front of my face in a green haze.
“You can’t give up now,” says the hair. It sounds like a million little voices, as if every individual hair were speaking at once.
“What?” I say.
“Shh,” says the hair. “You’ll get done for the woodworm. We’ve come too far to give up now. Aslef only has one round left in him. Do it for us!”
“’Oo are you talkin’ to?” slurs Aslef.
“No one,” I say. “Jusht drin’ your drin’ m’kay?”
Aslef knocks back his absinth, blinks and falls flat on his face, out cold.

I’ve won.

I’ve won! I decide to go with the urge to climb on Aslef’s back and I stand with my fist raised in the air.
“I am Edgar!” I shout. “Edgar, the dragon slayer!”
That is the last thing I remember.

When I wake up I am somewhere dark and slightly damp smelling. I’m lying on something soft and Elle is sitting next to me holing a cold, damp cloth against my forehead. I quickly become aware of a sensation like my brain is trying to climb out of my head via my eyeballs. It feels like a badger with poor personal hygiene has slept in my mouth.

“You’re awake!” squeals Elle.
“Please, no loud noises,” I croak. “Can I have some water?”
She hands me a wooden cup.
“How long have I been out?”
“Three days.”
“Three days! Where are we?”
“Inside a tree,” says Elle. “The dragons don’t exactly have guest accommodation for humans. I need to tell Rilor you’re awake. And your parents.”

Before Elle can make a move, my mother bursts through the door dragging my bald father by the arm. She flings herself on top of me and smothers me in kisses.
“You’re alive!”
“Yes, mum. I’m alive.”
“Your father,” she says, looking at him lovingly. “Has no hangover. Imagine that!”
“That’s because dad’s bloodstream is already about 90% absinth,” I say. “He was just topping up.”
“How did you do it in the end?” asks Elle.
“Good drinking genes,” says my dad.
“Well that,” I say. “And dad’s hair talked me through it.”
“You see,” says my dad. “I told you all my ideas came from my hair!”
“Sure honey,” says my mum. “I think Edgar needs some more sleep.”

Elle tells me the trolls have already returned to London Bridge as they were unhappy leaving it unguarded for too long. It appears they don’t feel much worse for the outcome of the contest since they never made any use of the book in five hundred years anyway. Also, Elle says, Steen fancies my mum so much, he’d forgive her anything.
When I meet Rilor in his personal treasure cave, I have no idea what to expect.  He is sitting on a giant pile of gold with Aslef chained to the floor next to him.

“Well, human,” he says. “I appear to have underestimated you. You have triumphed. When you are fully recovered you may take your family and return to your lives. All contracts between your father and Aslef are void and you owe nothing to the dragons.”
“Thank-you,” I say. “What’s going to happen to Aslef?”
Rilor shrugs. “As victor in the contest, I suppose his fate is yours to decide.”

I look over at Aslef and it’s easy to imagine letting the dragons do what they want with him after the amount of lying, cheating and stealing he’s done. But I feel different since I met Aslef. The adventure he has taken me on has changed me forever. I’ve come to accept my family exactly the way they are and love them for their uniqueness and more than anything I’ve come to accept that who they are will always be part of me and denying who I am has caused me nothing but heartache.

“I think he should stay here with you,” I say.  “As long as he never gambles again.”
“Really?” asks Aslef.
“Then it is so,” says Rilor. “There is one other matter to resolve though.”
Oh god, what now…
“You have returned our book to us. The deed must be rewarded. You must visit my personal treasure store and pick an item to exchange for the book.”
I know exactly what I want and it’s not hard to find. There are hundreds of rings sticking out of the mountain of gold in Rilor’s care.
“Will you?” I ask Elle.
“Of course I will,” she says. “You’re Edgar, the dragon slayer aren’t you? Who am I to say no?”

THE END

Author’s note: it’s a fairytale, right? Probably the world’s weirdest fairytale but a fairytale nonetheless, so I suppose you want to know what happened to everyone…

Edgar and Elle got married and traveled all over the world together. They have a three-year old daughter. Her name is Colin.

Lenny’s hair never grew back, although he regularly meets up with it and the fairy for chats in the pub. He is still touring with The Truth.

Ruby wrote a bestseller called “Florista, The Dragon Queen” and is a proud, if overbearing grandmother to Colin.

Lenny and Ruby are still happily married.

Not long after the drinking competition, Torhen won a bet on a cat race with some very naïve elves. He won enough money to pay his debts and for him and Steen to return to Oslo and buy their own bridge. They’re working on a business plan for setting up a franchise.

Aslef lasted six months in the Forest Of Dean before an incident with a witch and some magic beans got him kicked straight back out. I still see him in Camden sometimes… above a Chinese takeaway on the high street. As much as he complains, I think he loves it.